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Cynical opportunist who are using the Connecticut school massacre as a wedge to impose gun controls are going to have to go a lot further than simply banning guns if they want to protect everyone, everywhere, from murderous loons. The following are examples of murderers who were able to rack up body counts without firing a shot, demonstrating that the most deadly weapon in the world is the human brain.

Method of murder: Fire (a home-made flamethrower constructed from a garden sprayer) / Stabbing with a long lance

Location: Cologne, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany

Status: Committed suicide by poisoning himself with cyanide the same day. Died next day

In 1932, Julian Marcelino, a Filipino immigrant killed 6 people and wounded 15 on a Seattle street using only a pair of bolo knives.

CRIME: Crime-of-the-Week
Monday, Dec. 05, 1932

Late Thanksgiving afternoon in Seattle, a little Filipino named Julian Marcelino made his way to the Midway Hotel, small downtown hostelry. He walked into the room of an elderly acquaintance, Pito Gualto, stabbed him over the heart. He turned and stabbed Pito Gualto's nephew. Then Julian Marcelino, a slightly dazed expression on his small brown face, descended into the street and quietly, efficiently, went amok. Proceeding at an even dog trot, a knife fashioned out of a bolo (native blade) in each hand, he skewered an aged grocer as he stood in his store doorway, then an amazed bystander...

Now, these are older attacks, but there have been so many sword attacks in Britain recently that the government is moving to ban samurai swords:

Samurai swords to be banned after spate of horrific sword murders

By DANIEL BATES
Last updated at 09:38 11 December 2007

Banned: A samurai sword

Samurai swords are to be outlawed under a government crackdown.

Possessing, manufacturing or importing the weapon will all be banned, Home Secretary Jacqui Smith will announce this week.
The penalty for breaching the law will be a minimum of six months in prison and a fine of £5,000.

The move will be seen as an attempt to counter the rise in popularity of Samurai swords among violent criminals.
For some it has become the weapon of choice.

Home Office figures show there have been nearly 100 crimes involving the sword since 2003 and at least six people have been murdered by them.
The only exemptions to the new laws will be genuine historical artefacts as used by collectors and martial arts clubs.

Among the crimes where Samurai swords were involved was that involving former Lib Dem MP Nigel Jones.

He was set upon in 2000 by Robert Ashman, who was wielding the weapon.

Although Mr Jones survived with horrific injuries his parliamentary aide Andrew Pennington was killed after being stabbed six times.
Earlier this year drug addict Hugh Penrose was jailed for at least 19 years for slashing a 21-year-old woman with a samurai sword and running her over.

Another case was Bradley Moran who was jailed for 17 years for killing a man with a Samurai sword after a row in a nightclub.

Only two months ago thieves armed with a similar weapon robbed a security van of £40,000 in Northampton.

Currently it is legal to buy Samurai swords and they are easily available in martial arts shops and on the internet.

The only restriction is they cannot be carried in a public place, the penalty for which is a maximum jail sentence of four years.

In March this year the government published a consultation paper called 'Banning Offensive Weapons'. It proposed outlawing all Samurai swords, although now is the first time firm plans will be put forward to do so.

Clearly, ninjas will be the next persecuted group in Britain. However, swordsmen are pikers when it comes to mass murder. Arson claims far more victims per incident, but even then, it's not exactly an open an shut case, since the worst mass murder in American history was committed with boxcutters. However, the second worst mass murder in NYC history was the 1990 Happy Land fire, an arson attack that killed 87 people, set by a Cuban criminal who had come to the US in the Mariel Boat Lift. The Dupont Plaza Hotel fire in San Juan, Puerto Rico on New Year's Eve, 1986 took 97 lives and caused 140 injuries. It was set by three disgruntled employees of the hotel.

The one commonality with mass murder has nothing to do with the weapons used, and everything to do with the mindset of the killers:

It sickens me that in this time of tragedy when we should be mourning the victims and comforting our children, the gun control advocates are using this to further a political agenda.

So the question is, if we get rid of the guns, do we really get rid of the senseless violence? Consider this: In today's “South China Morning Post”, a newspaper that covers the area in and surrounding Hong Kong, they report a tragedy that seems to represent a trend of attacks against children in the region. The headline reads, “Knifeman Injures 23 in Henan School Attack”. The number of deaths were not yet confirmed at this writing.
The paper goes on to report several recent and similar attacks in the region. In 2010, eight children were killed and five were injured by a knife wielding assailant outside a primary school. In the two months following, eight students were killed and fifty seven were injured in four similar (perhaps copy-cat) knife attacks and two months ago three children were killed and thirteen injured by a man swinging a machete in a daycare center. China has some of the strictest gun laws in the world. Perhaps they also need to ban knives?

The simple fact is that there is indeed a common denominator here and it’s not the weapon. Rather, it’s the perpetrator AND their mental illness. The China news service reports that yesterday’s attacker was “suffering from a mental disorder” and in the Connecticut case there's talk that the elder Lanza questioned on Facebook his brother's mental capabilities. I am virtually certain that just like Jared Loughner in Arizona and James Holmes in Colorado, Adam Lanza was suffering from a serious psychiatric condition.

When a psychotic individual decides to kill, taking away access to guns will simply lead to a knife, or explosives, a club or a car as his weapon of choice. We must open our eyes and recognize that severe, psychotic mental illness is a common thread among mass murderers. Most psychotic individuals are not violent, so the task is to identify those that are. Until we put our focus on treating the underlying condition, these tradgedies will continue to occur.

The point is that evil isn't inherent in inanimate objects. Guns, knives, swords and incendiaries are inert tools, until they are used by someone with intent. That intent may be rational or irrational, but without it, a gun is a lump of metal.

True. So what you do is give the school staff the power to stop whatever happens. If it's verbal teasing, you give them the power to tell the kids to stop it. If it's rock throwing, you give them the...